THE NEWS HACK'S CREED:
I know more than you.
I make lots more money than you.
I'm smarter than you.
I'm sexier than you.
I appear on TV all the time.
I work ten minutes a day.
I rule the universe.
I'm going to live forever.
You are an idiot.
THE NEWS HACK'S CREED, No. 2:
A lie isn't a lie when it tells THE TRUTH.
THE NEWS HACK'S CREED, No. 3:
I've come to realize that the looseness of the journalistic life, the seeming laxity of the newsroom, is an illusion. Yes, there's informality and there's humor, but beneath the surface lies something deadly serious. It is a code. Sometimes the code is not even written down, but it is deeply believed in. And, when violated, it is enforced with tribal ferocity.
--JOHN "OMERTA" CARROLL.
THE NEWS HACK'S CREED, No. 4:
News isn't news when we don't report it.
PERMALINKS:
THE NEWS HACKS' DICTIONARY
THE EUGENE DAVID GLOSSARY
AMERICA'S MOST UNINTENTIONALLY FUNNY WEB SITE!
Blogroll Me!
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Monday, May 31, 2010
Speaking of Bing.com Barnes & Noble is having a "sale". (Plus you get an eight percent Bing Cashback -- enough to save me the sales tax! Wow!) Looking for "classic" DVDs I found all Sonys (i.e., Columbias) and picked eight titles including On the Waterfront (the first time I've seen it for under $10) and Lost Horizon (why can't Sony reissue the musical?); I also bought Funny Girl, the title that pretty conclusively states Hollywood was all downhill for Babs; and The Taming of the Shrew, better called The Story of Liz and Dick. One "classic" I chickened out on is Dr. Strangelove. (This from someone who owns The Ghost and Mr. Chicken! It was on sale at Oldies.com.) I confess to speak from ignorance but from its CRITICALLY-ACCLAIMED REP I guess it's a smug PC "comedy" where good ol' Southern Republicans nuke the world. (YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEHAH!!!!!) That it came out the year some news hacks determined Barry Goldwater was a nutcase doesn't help. What's more it's from ONE OF THE ALL TIME GREAT DIREC-TORS. Besides it set Hollywood's politics pretty well in stone, not that rockheads needed help. To my thinking Dr. Strangelove provided the philosophy, Bonnie and Clyde the attitude, and ST. JACK OF VALENTI the excuses, and the movies have been genius since.
I'm not totally closed to buying it, but to paraphrase a great ad campaign, it will be eventually -- but not now.
I'm not totally closed to buying it, but to paraphrase a great ad campaign, it will be eventually -- but not now.
One reason I've taken time off from blogging (The World Savers of Mountain View notwithstanding) is I've been busy melting my head down figuring when or if I should buy a new computer. My five year old Lenny is perfectly adequate but Firefox and the BUGMEISTERS' Media Player give it seizures; I fear though Windows 7 is merely quirky in a different way, and that 6 or 12 or 24 gigs of memory will be so busily churning away they won't be better than the two in my current box. HP and some eBay seller are having sales on "refurbished" computers (on some models the latter's throwing in Windows 7 Ultimate!) but as I said before I want the ability to expand, however little I may use it, and the I7-900 series Pavilion Elite models come with only four SATA ports, despite having room for six drives (the space for one was taken by the largely useless USB Portable Media Drive, now discontinued, its cubbyhole walled off by a bracket); to complicate things (sorry for this boring exposition) HP has introduced a new model, the HPE-270F, with space for three hard drives; the problem is to get the third in they discontinued the largely useless USB Pocket Media Drive, and meantime the motherboard (the notorious Pegatron Truckee, blamed for all sorts of madness with earlier models) apparently has the same four SATA ports; you must choose between a hard drive and an optical drive. I don't like that kind of choice. I've spent a day gnashing my head realizing you can't jerry-rig a SATA port from a USB port. (Don't bother with HP's site; the installation instructions are from a discontinued model.) Given the motherboard three months' warranty is not reassuring. And Dell keeps a second graphics card off its putative high-end model (I am NOT buying one of those dorky overpriced Alienware robots), and the supreme golfer-CEO still outsources the help to Inja. So I'm thinking of building my own box. The slightly shady retailer TigerDirect.com (which does business under twenty-three names, including Circuit City) has combos and a 12-percent rebate from Bing.com. (The BUGMIESTERS strike again!) Once you decide to do-it-yourself you plunge into a world of debates over angels on the heads of pins, only the angels and pins are motherboards, and the relative speed of Intel's chips -- is an 860 better than a 930? A P55 board or an X58? -- and that geekiness-uber-alles of OVERCLOCKING, and WATER COOLING, and NewEgg.com rankings, and you start to wonder why you want to buy a computer, let alone build one. And DON'T get started on GRAPHICS CARDS -- or even PSUs. And then you must worry that you'll blow your thousand-dollar-plus amalgamation up even though the chances are supposedly remote. Regardless I'm leaning on building one, which Intel has actually made sort-of fun -- you just drop the chip in the slot, chose a latch, pop the stock cooler over the chip, and voila! However having already destroyed one old computer by jamming the memory cards in the wrong way one can't be too sanguine.
We do not know why LALA had to report on this "demonstration", but we do know many hacks don't seem to realize such non-stories are the moral equivalent of writing about certain people whose last name begins with a K, and that they serve to utterly waste our time, and given how they "report" the news these days it's not clear they care.
If this was unprovoked, it was a cowardly act. But the Palestinians are masters at PR, and they play the WORRRRRRRULD COMMUNITY like Nero's fiddle, and it will be a while before we learn the full truth. In the mean time the WORRRRRRRRRULD COMMUNITY can play with what it plays best -- itself.
And because we have come to know such stories by heart, it becomes yet one more nuisance to deal with on the daily Web prowl, like the endless stream of non-Middle Eastern press releases.
And because we have come to know such stories by heart, it becomes yet one more nuisance to deal with on the daily Web prowl, like the endless stream of non-Middle Eastern press releases.
Saturday, May 29, 2010
The backlash against climate science is also about the way in which leading scientists allied themselves with politicians and activists to promote their cause. Some of the IPCC’s most-quoted data and recommendations were taken straight out of unchecked activist brochures, newspaper articles, and corporate reports—including claims of plummeting crop yields in Africa and the rising costs of warming-related natural disasters, both of which have been refuted by academic studies.
WhooooooooooooOOOOOOOOOOOOOPS!!!!!
The Osama Channel, still up to its old tricks:
The two language services are editorially separate. The English one’s choice of topics reflects the third-world interests of its viewers, concentrating more than its Western counterparts do on global poverty and the anger often felt towards America and the West. But it offers a wide range of opinion and covers Western politics well too. Both language services have bureaus in Jerusalem, Gaza and Ramallah (the Palestinian Authority’s seat), regularly giving Israelis a voice.
The Arabic service is a lot more controversial. Pro-Western Arab governments, particularly those of Egypt and Saudi Arabia, which denies Al Jazeera a bureau, repeatedly accuse it of bias. In particular they say it favours the Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt’s chief opposition, and Hamas, the Islamist movement that runs Gaza and refuses to recognise Israel. The Arabic service’s head, Waddah Khanfur, and his news editor, Ahmed Sheikh, are both West Bank Palestinians said to enjoy cosy relations with Hamas. Many of the station’s Egyptian staff are deemed sympathetic to the Brotherhood, of which Hamas is a branch....
Al Jazeera’s anti-Western populism was strongly echoed at its recent forum on “the Arab and Muslim world: alternative visions”. Many speakers, denoting piety or loyalty to political Islam, prefaced their remarks with incantations of reverence for the Prophet Muhammad. On Palestine, not a single one of 200-odd invited participants spoke up for a two-state solution, apart from a clutch of doveish Americans; Hamas’s official one-state preference for the Jewish state’s abolition easily prevailed. A senior Hamas man waxed eloquent. If a representative of the Palestinian Authority, now in “proximity talks” with Israel, was present, his voice was unheard.
On Iraq, not a single speaker, apart from a forlorn parliamentarian from the Iraqi prime minister’s party who made a desultory comment by video-conference, expressed a flicker of sympathy for the new Shia-led order, which several voices denounced as wholly illegitimate. The Gazan who edits al-Quds al-Arabi, a populist London-based newspaper that resonates in the Arab world, drew the loudest applause with a ringing call to back the continuing Iraqi “resistance”, even though the fight is now almost entirely between Arabs. No wonder Al Jazeera makes pro-Western Arab leaders, excoriated as puppets, feel queasy—Qatar’s, of course, excepted.
The two language services are editorially separate. The English one’s choice of topics reflects the third-world interests of its viewers, concentrating more than its Western counterparts do on global poverty and the anger often felt towards America and the West. But it offers a wide range of opinion and covers Western politics well too. Both language services have bureaus in Jerusalem, Gaza and Ramallah (the Palestinian Authority’s seat), regularly giving Israelis a voice.
The Arabic service is a lot more controversial. Pro-Western Arab governments, particularly those of Egypt and Saudi Arabia, which denies Al Jazeera a bureau, repeatedly accuse it of bias. In particular they say it favours the Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt’s chief opposition, and Hamas, the Islamist movement that runs Gaza and refuses to recognise Israel. The Arabic service’s head, Waddah Khanfur, and his news editor, Ahmed Sheikh, are both West Bank Palestinians said to enjoy cosy relations with Hamas. Many of the station’s Egyptian staff are deemed sympathetic to the Brotherhood, of which Hamas is a branch....
Al Jazeera’s anti-Western populism was strongly echoed at its recent forum on “the Arab and Muslim world: alternative visions”. Many speakers, denoting piety or loyalty to political Islam, prefaced their remarks with incantations of reverence for the Prophet Muhammad. On Palestine, not a single one of 200-odd invited participants spoke up for a two-state solution, apart from a clutch of doveish Americans; Hamas’s official one-state preference for the Jewish state’s abolition easily prevailed. A senior Hamas man waxed eloquent. If a representative of the Palestinian Authority, now in “proximity talks” with Israel, was present, his voice was unheard.
On Iraq, not a single speaker, apart from a forlorn parliamentarian from the Iraqi prime minister’s party who made a desultory comment by video-conference, expressed a flicker of sympathy for the new Shia-led order, which several voices denounced as wholly illegitimate. The Gazan who edits al-Quds al-Arabi, a populist London-based newspaper that resonates in the Arab world, drew the loudest applause with a ringing call to back the continuing Iraqi “resistance”, even though the fight is now almost entirely between Arabs. No wonder Al Jazeera makes pro-Western Arab leaders, excoriated as puppets, feel queasy—Qatar’s, of course, excepted.
Speaking of successes, this vast one has written a colyumn (not online yet) praising our mayor's attempt at a soda tax. I do not like writing about things employer-related but so goaded I must. As a Cocaholic with nerves and teeth to evidence it I was intensely concerned our City Council would have a mass Profile in Courage and approve the thing. We all agree caffeinated carbonated high-fructose-corn-syrup water is dubious for the health. But to put it in a league with tobacco and alcohol is at best obtuse, with the sort of PC hectoring that underlines such a tax's true purpose. What is more our guvment paid out millions to bribe Tasty Baking Co. to stay in Philthydelphia. You want junk food? Consider its recent totally artificial imitations of Yodels. And what guvment taketh guvment can give away. This would have cost jobs -- and revenues to our city's Water Department, where I work. (Guess who two of our biggest customers are?) We might not have lost as much as we made but it's the sort of lawmaking we've been so accustomed to lately, where the three-fingered right hand scribbles a law and the palsied left hand administers it, and there's never the passing of the baton or even a shaking of hands.
Buzz wrote this because he can afford the taxes -- hundreds of times over. Too many colyumnists have gotten the effete-snob way because they're so much better than the reader simps. And Buzz has made millions from the royalties from "the best book on sports over the last quarter century", and HIS movie, and HIS TV show, not to mention HIS speaking engagements; so maybe the time has come for HIM to retire, as did his dear friend that former StinkyInky colyumnist the DOG MAN, and live the life of Riley in Southern Cal, where he belongs -- or better still in BRISTOL, LAND OF ZILLIONAIRES.
Buzz wrote this because he can afford the taxes -- hundreds of times over. Too many colyumnists have gotten the effete-snob way because they're so much better than the reader simps. And Buzz has made millions from the royalties from "the best book on sports over the last quarter century", and HIS movie, and HIS TV show, not to mention HIS speaking engagements; so maybe the time has come for HIM to retire, as did his dear friend that former StinkyInky colyumnist the DOG MAN, and live the life of Riley in Southern Cal, where he belongs -- or better still in BRISTOL, LAND OF ZILLIONAIRES.
Terry Teachout has written a somewhat fatuous column about "masterpiece fatigue" -- somewhat fatuous in that Terry's become a different writer since the "success" of his AH-pe-RAH, and the "success" of his Satch bio, and perhaps somewhere he figures his musical masterwork should take the place of those fatigued masterpieces. (Never mind it got rotten reviews -- but didn't Tchaikovsky?) That said the problem with Kind of Blue may not be fatigue but groupthink; as it's the victim of so much CRITICAL ACCLAIM you must steel yourself up to like it, and it turns out to be, well, dull. What Mark Twain said of books applies to CRITICALLY ACCLAIMED jazz albums. And the chances of your throwing jazz away with Kind of Blue vastly increase if you're a neophyte. (I happen to like Birth of the Cool myself.) There's plenty of good obscure music floating around. How many thousands of jazz CDs are there? The excellent British label Hyperion has made a whole series out of forgotten piano concertos. The problem is most were forgotten for a reason. Nikolai Medtner (one example) was as profound a composer as Rachmaninoff -- but his works are basically all harmony and no melody. Too much art inevitably must succumb to the long-tail syndrome (ugh!). But another part of it, a part Teachout is obscuring in no small way because he's written a "successful" opera, is that nobody's writing the works that could supplant the Messiahs and Nutcrackers, for the genius isn't there anymore, however many raves Terry writes.
We have not had to read that longtime PEOPLE WARNER MAGAZINES toady B. S. DEFENDER for awhile, but HENRY HONEST!!!!! has forced him on us, and we can say just as bloggers like B. S. have NOT led to America to jernalistic nirvana, so we doubt His Omnipotence will tax them into submission -- though we may make an exception with B. S.
Several years ago we said, "Any big business that calls itself 'international' gives itself carte blanche to commit treason." BP is a nominally British corporation -- it was British Petroleum even after the crying jag over Diana -- but if you asked the company's senior lummoxes where they're headquartered they'd say, in a fit of automatic cliché spouting, "WE'RE HEADQUARTERED ALL OVER THE WORLD!!!!!" (The more the oil leaks the more it would seem that way.) The same with STEVEDOM, HP and Dell. Ask that Phil Mickelson lookalike who founded the last excuse for outsourcing what country he's headquartered in and it would add ten strokes every round to his daily golf game. STEVEDOM? STEVEDOM knows no bounds; it is a religion, a philosophy -- and a COUNTRY! With such attitudes international traitors like BP can foul the water anywhere, and STEVEDOMs can administer all manner of ill treatments to their wage slaves.
P. S.
Working at Foxconn dramatically reduces people’s risk of suicide! (Boldface SIC)
Tom's ready for a con-SER-va-tive BLOG!
P. S.
Working at Foxconn dramatically reduces people’s risk of suicide! (Boldface SIC)
Tom's ready for a con-SER-va-tive BLOG!
In discussions with some of the 115 rig workers who were rescued after the blast, Billy Anderson said he learned that his son’s efforts during the final minutes to control the pressure surge saved scores of lives.
“My boy was cremated,” Billy Anderson said. “But the actions he and those other 10 heroes took are what made it possible for more than 100 other people to escape with their lives.”
Jason Anderson was a toolpusher, an offshore drilling job akin to foreman on a construction site, which gave him responsibility for overseeing the workers involved in the nuts- and-bolts of drilling and finishing wells.
Anderson had worked aboard the Deepwater Horizon since it was launched from a South Korean shipyard in 2001, his father said. Once the vessel arrived in the Gulf of Mexico, he worked alongside exploration specialists from BP, which had the rig under lease for all of its existence. Prior to that, he was assigned to the Cajun Express, another of Geneva-based Transocean’s most sophisticated rigs.
Shortly before last month’s disaster, Anderson had been promoted to senior toolpusher and was scheduled to transfer to his new post aboard another rig, the Discoverer Spirit, by helicopter at 7 a.m. on April 21. The Deepwater Horizon exploded nine hours before his flight was due to lift off.
Anderson, a father of two and a former high school football middle linebacker, started working aboard offshore rigs in 1995, scraping paint from below the water line, the lowest-ranking job on a rig.
His father thought the grueling labor would convince his son to study harder after two lackluster years of junior college. Instead, Jason Anderson decided he enjoyed being offshore and began working his way up to jobs of increasing responsibility, his father said.
“He loved his work and thought of his crewmates as family,” said Billy Anderson. “He was the kind of son a man wants and loves and hopes his son will be.”
These are the people the Chief DILBERTS must sacrifice in order to pay themselves what they don't deserve.
P. S. BP meekly pays a $69,200 fine, less than some CEOs earn in a day.
“My boy was cremated,” Billy Anderson said. “But the actions he and those other 10 heroes took are what made it possible for more than 100 other people to escape with their lives.”
Jason Anderson was a toolpusher, an offshore drilling job akin to foreman on a construction site, which gave him responsibility for overseeing the workers involved in the nuts- and-bolts of drilling and finishing wells.
Anderson had worked aboard the Deepwater Horizon since it was launched from a South Korean shipyard in 2001, his father said. Once the vessel arrived in the Gulf of Mexico, he worked alongside exploration specialists from BP, which had the rig under lease for all of its existence. Prior to that, he was assigned to the Cajun Express, another of Geneva-based Transocean’s most sophisticated rigs.
Shortly before last month’s disaster, Anderson had been promoted to senior toolpusher and was scheduled to transfer to his new post aboard another rig, the Discoverer Spirit, by helicopter at 7 a.m. on April 21. The Deepwater Horizon exploded nine hours before his flight was due to lift off.
Anderson, a father of two and a former high school football middle linebacker, started working aboard offshore rigs in 1995, scraping paint from below the water line, the lowest-ranking job on a rig.
His father thought the grueling labor would convince his son to study harder after two lackluster years of junior college. Instead, Jason Anderson decided he enjoyed being offshore and began working his way up to jobs of increasing responsibility, his father said.
“He loved his work and thought of his crewmates as family,” said Billy Anderson. “He was the kind of son a man wants and loves and hopes his son will be.”
These are the people the Chief DILBERTS must sacrifice in order to pay themselves what they don't deserve.
P. S. BP meekly pays a $69,200 fine, less than some CEOs earn in a day.
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
Reading of Art Linkletter it's clear he had opportunities impossible in our time, but more than that, he had that inner gumption to overcome his earliest adversity of abandonment (and the awful tragedy of his daughter's death thanks to drugs) to become a living embodiment of Ben Franklin's wisdom, an active man who lived, and who had that unconquerable optimism of the sort that once guided America, and in this case made for a truly happy man who made others happy too.
We must wonder how many stories the GANNETTOIDS had to ignore to make room for this ad about edible logos and other merchandise from our favorite amalgamation of AAAAAAAAAAAAAAATTITUDE, but it was enough to earn them another
NEUHARTHISM OF THE WEEK AWARD!
NEUHARTHISM OF THE WEEK AWARD!
The same megalomaniacs prostrate with grief three years ago at the funeral of ST. JACK OF VALENTI had a reunion in Lincoln Center, and we can be sure between backslaps they were very busy blaming THEIR AUDIENCE for the crappy pictures THEY somehow manage to make.
And there was another inconvenience last night, too.
And there was another inconvenience last night, too.
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
TRANSLATION: Rocco and his hopeful believers want to wave their TRANSGRESSIVE middle fingers at the public again (M----ms thankfully excluded), but this won't happen because the public has learned how to be transgressive BACK.
(Via the usual AHTSJournal)
(Via the usual AHTSJournal)
ARCHDaily!
$100 million -- and when do the LAWSUITS begin?
A "clinic for brain health in Las Vegas". We could think of a few people who could use it.
And it goes without saying -- Veg DESERVES IT.
At least it doesn't rain in Veg -- for now. (Although that MIT lawsuit was settled, dammit!)
I want to be with those doctors after a year in one of MR. STARCHITECT's trapezoids.
AND:
A nursing home!
Could it be -- an advanced case of STARCHITECTURAL SENILITY?
$100 million -- and when do the LAWSUITS begin?
A "clinic for brain health in Las Vegas". We could think of a few people who could use it.
And it goes without saying -- Veg DESERVES IT.
At least it doesn't rain in Veg -- for now. (Although that MIT lawsuit was settled, dammit!)
I want to be with those doctors after a year in one of MR. STARCHITECT's trapezoids.
AND:
A nursing home!
Could it be -- an advanced case of STARCHITECTURAL SENILITY?
And speaking of His Honorary, isn't This Wondrous News an argument against neutral sites?
And it only took millions of taxpayers shaken upside-down to do it!
Of course I can think of arguments for it: INBEV (Anheuser-Busch), P&G, Coke, PepsiCo, the Clunker Brothers, the movee extruders, etc., etc., ETC.
And it only took millions of taxpayers shaken upside-down to do it!
Of course I can think of arguments for it: INBEV (Anheuser-Busch), P&G, Coke, PepsiCo, the Clunker Brothers, the movee extruders, etc., etc., ETC.
Three heds from The Usual Romy:
Bankrupt Tribune wants to give another $15 million in bonuses to executives (Link)
$15 million colyumnists? $15 million bonuses.
Bloomberg: 'BusinessWeek lost its way and it was not germane to its audience' (Link)
Honorary Mayor, judging from Your version it's still in a dark forest in the dead of a cloudy, foggy, rainy night.
Two more editors resign from Harper's Magazine (Link)
When does that irrelevance finally kick its long-awaited bucket?
Bankrupt Tribune wants to give another $15 million in bonuses to executives (Link)
$15 million colyumnists? $15 million bonuses.
Bloomberg: 'BusinessWeek lost its way and it was not germane to its audience' (Link)
Honorary Mayor, judging from Your version it's still in a dark forest in the dead of a cloudy, foggy, rainy night.
Two more editors resign from Harper's Magazine (Link)
When does that irrelevance finally kick its long-awaited bucket?
Really I wish both sides would sit down and shut up, but His Omnipotence brought this on Himself by being something -- different.
(Via the usual NRO)
(Via the usual NRO)
Fifteen years ago (I think) that hack Connell, Cornell, whatever her name is, started writing in The Cute Little Pink Paper about well-dressed upscale sailor-whores, and I subscribed to the paper, and my first reaction was EW!!! YUCK!!!! GROSS!!!!! It is exasperating to think, fifteen years later, that the world has finally caught up to me, especially when this new revulsion is expressed by hypocrites who fifteen years ago would have been leading the raves.
"WE WERE GIVEN A CHANCE TO RE-BRAND, TO KEEP WHAT WAS TRADITIONAL BUT MAKE OURSELVES MORE TODAY, AND I THINK WE'VE DONE THAT!!!!!" he said. "WE'RE NOW BACK WITH A LOT OF STRENGTH AND BACK TO SHOW EVERYONE THAT MISS AMERICA IS THE AMERICAN TRADITION. IT'S A POP ICON!!!!!!!!!!" (Strong traditional iconic overemphasis added)
TRANSLATION: UB IGER frequents fire sales.
TRANSLATION: UB IGER frequents fire sales.
We doubt the Koreas will war, in part because the WORRRRRRULD COMMUNITY wants to maintain its fictions; but by not warring they set a new standard of diplomacy: The Obama Doctrine -- taking as many blows as you can before staging a national tantrum. Perhaps both sides perceive the costs of war are far greater than what might be gained by throwing tantrums. Yet in this conflict one side is utterly morally wrong; nonetheless the onus is plainly on South Korea, being the aggressed, and the WORRRRRRULD COMMUNITY believes all war wrong, no matter how justified (except against ISRAEL). But if any side can take infinite blows in the name of preserving "peace" at what absurd point is war justified?
The Blutos were relatively silent last night, probably because 1. It was a Monday, and only alcoholics get drunk on Mondays -- the definition of melancholy; 2. The stupids -- students were mostly gone back home to eventually root for teams other than "ours", and to look for other excuses for debauchery; 3. It was a blowout series (thankfully); 4. Winning a conference championship lacks the same mythical standing as a pennant, whose importance is a carefully-preserved figment of SELIGISM's sordid imagination; and 5. For all the talk of COMEBACK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!, professional hockey remains a hopelessly niche (read: largely ignored) sport whose self-inflicted wounds of the last decade are still very open, and which still smart. Now onto another celebration for the very affluent, and for the very affluent sports hacks engaged in another form of sleeping on a virtually nonexistent job, and for the crooked politicians who waste tax dollars to get free seats, and the hope that this will be a blowout sweep -- either way.
Sunday, May 23, 2010
Nearly every town had a Wee Willie Webber. He was our Jewish version of the "Kansas City Star" who unspooled the cartoons in the afternoons. Yes, nearly every town had them. Now no town has them. We are not better for it.
Look GANNETTOIDS, we know of your obsession with PROFITS, but don't you think sometimes you carry it a bit too far?
A NEUHARTHISM OF THE MONTH AWARD TO STEVE, BRIAN, ELYSA, JERRY -- AND DAVE 'N' JOHN!
Saturday, May 22, 2010
His Omnipotence wants us to seek cooperation in our military alliances. All well and good; so why is it from him it sounds as though we have to get permission first -- and especially the permission of those who wouldn't raise a finger in our defense -- and that we must get their permission regardless of how they've treated us?
We are sorry to learn Rafat Aji is leaving his site paidContent.org. He has performed a signal public service. Every time SLIME or PINCH have had a stupid idea we've turned there first, and the stupid ideas of now are surely not far different from the stupid ideas of 2002. The site became needed enough that its founder sold it to the publishers of the U. K.'s Guardian. As long as there are media moguls, and as long as they think they can "MONETIZE" the Web off the backs of the turnips, there will be paidContent.org.
And in other OUTSTANDING MOOVEE NOOZ, the Big Green Thing with the Satchmo Face and the Bugles Ears is PANCAKING, meaning even 3D has its limits.
And so do $20 TICKETS!!!!!
And so do $20 TICKETS!!!!!
BOB KERREY IS THE NEXT JACK VALENTI!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The ultimate schmoozer!
Just one problem: He'll be 67 in August, so obviously THE CONSPIRACY is choosing a Benedict.
The ultimate schmoozer!
Just one problem: He'll be 67 in August, so obviously THE CONSPIRACY is choosing a Benedict.
Friday, May 21, 2010
ARCHDaily!
Revenge of the White Piano Keys!
A big red starfish makes landfall in ABU DHABI!
Or is that some sort of superhero whose parachute failed?
A granddaddy of STARCHITECTURE! This hammering and sawing (which should be called Bearhug with the Letter N) dates from 1965. Visual practical jokes were predestined for AHCHITECTYUH. The STARCHITECT (whose name was Gwathemy) built it for his parents. I'd have been PLEASED. They probably were too.
Is the worst over?
If STARCHITECTS keep erecting MASTERPIECES like the last three WE HOPE NOT!
Revenge of the White Piano Keys!
A big red starfish makes landfall in ABU DHABI!
Or is that some sort of superhero whose parachute failed?
A granddaddy of STARCHITECTURE! This hammering and sawing (which should be called Bearhug with the Letter N) dates from 1965. Visual practical jokes were predestined for AHCHITECTYUH. The STARCHITECT (whose name was Gwathemy) built it for his parents. I'd have been PLEASED. They probably were too.
Is the worst over?
If STARCHITECTS keep erecting MASTERPIECES like the last three WE HOPE NOT!
And this ad reminds us that but for its deep deep pockets Bloomy would not have bought Bizweek. We are supposed to ooh and aah HSN's "comeback" but we will always associate it with tacky, and when the Biz does the LEGENDARY WELCH routine you know it's hiding something.
Here there's catastrophic flooding in Poland (and HENRY HONEST!!!!! tells us), and the former Mouth of the Mouth of the South, "International Edition", wastes a good chunk of its home page on an ad for His Highness Luke Spielberg -- and Poland doesn't even merit a squib on the HOME PAGE! -- proof reputations in the nooz biz are nothing more than the HOT AIR they're built on, and that no nooz organization can PAYWALL its way to excellence -- and the Mouth lives thanks to the CABLE PAYWALL.
Con-SER-va-tives are coming to realize some of their more voluble brethren have elected a crank as their Senate nominee in Kentucky. It is highly unlikely RON!!!!! PAUL!!!!! Jr.'s fruit fell too far from his father's thoroughly rotten tree. God knows how much of the cracked pottery he's cleaned and polished up in his own mind; that he seems to share his father's obsession with economics suggests a lot. It will not be fun to live in Kentucky this year as this footstomper faces a knee-jerk liberal, but that fine predicament is precisely what THE SONS OF SARAH!!!!! have gotten the Bluegrass State into.
Thursday, May 20, 2010
The West responds to Islam with a ineffectual stupid prank. It responds with a prank because it cannot respond by being itself. Being itself the West is decadent and ashamed. It has lost its moral and intellectual bearings. Whatever its bearings (and frequently its lack thereof) Islam is confident and tough. We can see who ultimately wins this battle.
Wednesday, May 19, 2010
Tuesday, May 18, 2010
I think what forced Congresspoop Souder to resign was not his adultery, not even his hypocrisy, but the turnips the voters' universal disgust that Congresspoops can think they live above and beyond the rest of us, and that their lawmaking provides the ultimate shield to our contempt.
Your book slobbering over Rupert Murdoch was soooo well-reported that it managed to lose your publisher a fortune on the advance.
[Y]ou've always wanted to be Teddy White, who himself outlived his form and sycophantic devotion to politicians.
Much as we hate to link to NICK DORKEN, we will say Jonny "The Thinking Knee-Jerk" Alter and WOLFFMAN!!!!! deserve each other.
(Via MediaBistro)
[Y]ou've always wanted to be Teddy White, who himself outlived his form and sycophantic devotion to politicians.
Much as we hate to link to NICK DORKEN, we will say Jonny "The Thinking Knee-Jerk" Alter and WOLFFMAN!!!!! deserve each other.
(Via MediaBistro)
Monday, May 17, 2010
Shhh, don't say anything, but His Omnipotence has found a scapegoat for the oil spill. Promise you won't say anything? If news hacks won't you shouldn't.
(Via TINA!!!!!)
(Via TINA!!!!!)
What has triggered the suicide cluster at Foxconn?
How about assembly-line work for GOD?
Foxconn says it is at its wits’ end as to how to tackle the problem, and has even drafted in a Buddhist monk to try to purge its factories of evil spirits.
Buddhism can tackle STEVEISM?!?!?
(Via WOLFFMAN!!!!!)
How about assembly-line work for GOD?
Foxconn says it is at its wits’ end as to how to tackle the problem, and has even drafted in a Buddhist monk to try to purge its factories of evil spirits.
Buddhism can tackle STEVEISM?!?!?
(Via WOLFFMAN!!!!!)
For God's sake, Chris, blackmail is Iran's middle name.
When the day comes that Tehran can announce its nuclear capability, every shred of international law will have been discarded.
Buried under thousands of buckets of wet noodles.
When the day comes that Tehran can announce its nuclear capability, every shred of international law will have been discarded.
Buried under thousands of buckets of wet noodles.
The modern-day RED SKELTON does it again:
"I can't wait to interview the cast of 'Jersey Shore' on the same lot where they filmed 'Casablanca,'" O'Brien said.
No, that was shot on thirteen other stages; but they did shoot House of Wax, They Shoot Horses, Don't They, Stir Crazy, Blow Out, Body Double, The Lost Boys and Demolition Man there.
AND BLAZING SADDLES!!!!!
PFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFT!!!!!
P. S. Look carefully; PEOPLE WARNER calls it "DEMOLITIONS [SIC!!!!!] MAN." DOUBLE PFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFT!!!!!
"I can't wait to interview the cast of 'Jersey Shore' on the same lot where they filmed 'Casablanca,'" O'Brien said.
No, that was shot on thirteen other stages; but they did shoot House of Wax, They Shoot Horses, Don't They, Stir Crazy, Blow Out, Body Double, The Lost Boys and Demolition Man there.
AND BLAZING SADDLES!!!!!
PFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFT!!!!!
P. S. Look carefully; PEOPLE WARNER calls it "DEMOLITIONS [SIC!!!!!] MAN." DOUBLE PFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFT!!!!!
Well, I was wrong about Sullivan v. Florida, but it was close, and I figured there are times when common sense and the law have nothing to do with each other, especially when overseen by Nine Fingers.
Sunday, May 16, 2010
ARCHDaily!
A $5 million igloo!
What's it like in the dark?
Aren't these memorials to Communism going a bit too far?
So what do you do after entering that little-bitty "forest project" -- climb the wall to get out?
Whoever heard of putting a mausoleum in an office park?
Hmmm -- not too badly designed!
A $5 million igloo!
What's it like in the dark?
Aren't these memorials to Communism going a bit too far?
So what do you do after entering that little-bitty "forest project" -- climb the wall to get out?
Whoever heard of putting a mausoleum in an office park?
Hmmm -- not too badly designed!
If it's Sunday it must be Big Double-A-Scribble Time:
1. Reviving long-gone TV shows may be a risky maneuver, but the technique is gaining more fans, said Mr. Weeks. After all, he said, "Zombies are huge right now."
And the AMERICAN SOCIETY OF WILLFULLY IGNORANT ADVERTSIERS is keeping them alive!
Oh and seeing how SUMNER's reviving Hawaii Five-0 and seeing how TV series aren't supposed to have theme songs anymore -- what's He do about the theme song?
2. After hugging themselves for letting amateurs devise their ads the ads they're devising are getting very rankly amateur. We don't see why this should bother ad people -- isn't this just being annoying in a different way?
3. Meantime the Crainiacs celebrate "on-the-fly" advertising, which means it can be even more rank, or amateur, or both.
1. Reviving long-gone TV shows may be a risky maneuver, but the technique is gaining more fans, said Mr. Weeks. After all, he said, "Zombies are huge right now."
And the AMERICAN SOCIETY OF WILLFULLY IGNORANT ADVERTSIERS is keeping them alive!
Oh and seeing how SUMNER's reviving Hawaii Five-0 and seeing how TV series aren't supposed to have theme songs anymore -- what's He do about the theme song?
2. After hugging themselves for letting amateurs devise their ads the ads they're devising are getting very rankly amateur. We don't see why this should bother ad people -- isn't this just being annoying in a different way?
3. Meantime the Crainiacs celebrate "on-the-fly" advertising, which means it can be even more rank, or amateur, or both.
A student at RENDELL UNIVERSITY or somewhere left behind a whole bunch of paperback drama texts in our "reading room", which I promptly took, and one of them is a Penguin edition of John Gay's The Beggar's Opera, which contains an introduction suggesting George Frideric Handel invented MMMMMMMMMSSSSSSSSSSMMMMMMMMMM; at the very least he'd have forced Samuel Goldfish back to tanning gloves. It seems he brought Italian operas to London, and they were
remarkable for the sumptuousness of the costumes and the sophistication of the stage machinery. The libretto of Handel's very popular opera Rinaldo (1711), for example, requires the heroine to be carried through the air in Act I by a "Chariot drawn by two huge Dragons, out of whose Mouths issue Fire and Smoke", while Act II calls for waterfalls as well as "Thunder, Lightning and amazing Noises." With so much spectacle to engage its attention, the audience at an opera was unlikely to concern itself greatly with the details of the plot, which was in nearly every case if not manifestly absurd at least considerably remote from the concerns of the everyday.
TRANSLATION: TENTPOLES! (Although I doubt anyone will sing along with Iron Man 2 anytime soon -- even if it stars an AC-TOR.)
When they weren't obsessing over the scenery the audiences obsessed over the stars. British Italian opera needed real Italian singers, and for a time three dominated it: two prima-donnas and a castrato. We defer to the introduction again:
The three great Italian singers were first brought to together on the London stage in May 1726 for Handel's Allessandro, an opera carefully constructed so that neither Cuzzoni nor Faustina could claim to have the better role. The story concerns two women, Rossana (Faustino) and Lisana (Cuzzoni), both in love with Alexander the Great (Senesino); he wavers indecisively between them for virtually the whole length of the opera, only choosing Rossana at the last possible moment before the final curtain. [CHICKEN!] This even-handedness did not prevent the rivalry between Cuzzoni and Faustina form becoming notorious, however, and the London opera public divided into opposing claques so enthusiastically that by the spring of 1727 the young Lord Hervey complained that nobody talked about anything else. [!] Matters came to a violent if farcical head at a performance of Bononcini's Astyanax in June 1727 [the tentpoles had weird names then too] in which Cuzzoni and Faustina appeared. Showing scant respect for the Princess of Wales, who was present, the rival partisans in the audience became restive and then violent; as a contemporary newspaper reported, "the Contention at first was carried on by only Hissing on one Side, and Clapping on the other; but proceeded at length to Catcalls, and other great Indecencies." Spurred on no doubt by the excitement, Cuzzoni and Faustina so far forgot professional decorum as to come to blows on the stage, and the performance was abandoned in confusion.
TRANSLATION: Handel invented the Web long before Al Gore did.
The introduction also contains an account of London's unspeakable criminal aura of the day, vastly fueled by gin and stupid legislaTORS, which makes Noo Yawk in the seventies look like paradise.
P. S.
This furore seized the public imagination – the pamphleteer John Arbuthnot published "The DEVIL to pay at St. JAMES's: oR [Arbuthnot SIC or WIKI SIC?] A full and true ACCOUNT of a most horrid and bloody BATTLE between Madam FAUSTINA and Madam CUZZONI", in which he lambasted the two ladies: "TWO of a Trade seldom or ever agree … But who would have thought the Infection should reach the Hay-market and inspire Two Singing Ladies to pull each other's Coiffs, to the no small Disquiet of the Directors, who (God help them) have enough to do to keep Peace and Quietness between them. … I shall not determine who is the Aggressor, but take the surer Side, and wisely pronounce them both in Fault; for it is certainly an apparent Shame that two such well bred Ladies should call Bitch and Whore, should scold and fight like any Billingsgates." Recent research has shown, however, that there was a great deal of journalistic exaggeration in such accounts: it was the ladies' supporters who were behaving badly, not the singers themselves. Nonetheless, the entire opera season at that theatre was brought to a close by this scandal, though Handel kept both singers in his employ until the demise of his company in June 1728.
TRANSLATION: FREE REPUBLIC WAS THERE!!!!! And HUFF 'n' PUFF!!!!! And WOLFFMAN!!!!! AND HENRY HONEST!!!!! And SLIME!!!!! And SUMNER TOO!!!!!
remarkable for the sumptuousness of the costumes and the sophistication of the stage machinery. The libretto of Handel's very popular opera Rinaldo (1711), for example, requires the heroine to be carried through the air in Act I by a "Chariot drawn by two huge Dragons, out of whose Mouths issue Fire and Smoke", while Act II calls for waterfalls as well as "Thunder, Lightning and amazing Noises." With so much spectacle to engage its attention, the audience at an opera was unlikely to concern itself greatly with the details of the plot, which was in nearly every case if not manifestly absurd at least considerably remote from the concerns of the everyday.
TRANSLATION: TENTPOLES! (Although I doubt anyone will sing along with Iron Man 2 anytime soon -- even if it stars an AC-TOR.)
When they weren't obsessing over the scenery the audiences obsessed over the stars. British Italian opera needed real Italian singers, and for a time three dominated it: two prima-donnas and a castrato. We defer to the introduction again:
The three great Italian singers were first brought to together on the London stage in May 1726 for Handel's Allessandro, an opera carefully constructed so that neither Cuzzoni nor Faustina could claim to have the better role. The story concerns two women, Rossana (Faustino) and Lisana (Cuzzoni), both in love with Alexander the Great (Senesino); he wavers indecisively between them for virtually the whole length of the opera, only choosing Rossana at the last possible moment before the final curtain. [CHICKEN!] This even-handedness did not prevent the rivalry between Cuzzoni and Faustina form becoming notorious, however, and the London opera public divided into opposing claques so enthusiastically that by the spring of 1727 the young Lord Hervey complained that nobody talked about anything else. [!] Matters came to a violent if farcical head at a performance of Bononcini's Astyanax in June 1727 [the tentpoles had weird names then too] in which Cuzzoni and Faustina appeared. Showing scant respect for the Princess of Wales, who was present, the rival partisans in the audience became restive and then violent; as a contemporary newspaper reported, "the Contention at first was carried on by only Hissing on one Side, and Clapping on the other; but proceeded at length to Catcalls, and other great Indecencies." Spurred on no doubt by the excitement, Cuzzoni and Faustina so far forgot professional decorum as to come to blows on the stage, and the performance was abandoned in confusion.
TRANSLATION: Handel invented the Web long before Al Gore did.
The introduction also contains an account of London's unspeakable criminal aura of the day, vastly fueled by gin and stupid legislaTORS, which makes Noo Yawk in the seventies look like paradise.
P. S.
This furore seized the public imagination – the pamphleteer John Arbuthnot published "The DEVIL to pay at St. JAMES's: oR [Arbuthnot SIC or WIKI SIC?] A full and true ACCOUNT of a most horrid and bloody BATTLE between Madam FAUSTINA and Madam CUZZONI", in which he lambasted the two ladies: "TWO of a Trade seldom or ever agree … But who would have thought the Infection should reach the Hay-market and inspire Two Singing Ladies to pull each other's Coiffs, to the no small Disquiet of the Directors, who (God help them) have enough to do to keep Peace and Quietness between them. … I shall not determine who is the Aggressor, but take the surer Side, and wisely pronounce them both in Fault; for it is certainly an apparent Shame that two such well bred Ladies should call Bitch and Whore, should scold and fight like any Billingsgates." Recent research has shown, however, that there was a great deal of journalistic exaggeration in such accounts: it was the ladies' supporters who were behaving badly, not the singers themselves. Nonetheless, the entire opera season at that theatre was brought to a close by this scandal, though Handel kept both singers in his employ until the demise of his company in June 1728.
TRANSLATION: FREE REPUBLIC WAS THERE!!!!! And HUFF 'n' PUFF!!!!! And WOLFFMAN!!!!! AND HENRY HONEST!!!!! And SLIME!!!!! And SUMNER TOO!!!!!
Saturday, May 15, 2010
Friday, May 14, 2010
With melodrama worthy of a certain TheAtlantic.com blogger somebody named Algie Vitalis or something emotes that Hef is "the most influential figure that American popular culture has produced blahblahblah", ignoring that much of America had a sexual awakening in France after the Armistice; that the Roaring Twenties were full of liberation talk; that Ziegfeld (whom we mentioned yesterday) made public female nudity respectable; that burlesque queens got tossed in the clink long before this miracle knew how to read; that jazz was called the devil's music; that much of the ferment that made this titan possible came later from the Beats and academe, who had little truck with this the most important man of all time. Crying such gigantic crocodile tears only makes a pygmy huge in the mirror. In the end we must recall ST. EDWARD OF MURROW's favorite Shakespearean line: "The fault, dear Brutus, lies not in our stars, but in ourselves."
Given the emoting and the clumsy ambivalent cop-out tone at the end we'd say this has that pop-culture phreak JPOD's grimy revision marks all over it.
P. S.
He holds degrees from Dartmouth College, Trinity College, Cambridge, and the University of Chicago, where Saul Bellow was his doctoral dissertation adviser in the Committee on Social Thought.
After all that big thick head scratching he might not need Vitalis.
Given the emoting and the clumsy ambivalent cop-out tone at the end we'd say this has that pop-culture phreak JPOD's grimy revision marks all over it.
P. S.
He holds degrees from Dartmouth College, Trinity College, Cambridge, and the University of Chicago, where Saul Bellow was his doctoral dissertation adviser in the Committee on Social Thought.
After all that big thick head scratching he might not need Vitalis.
We know the feeling: ESPNCORP was going to build a Mickey Mouse Zone (or whatever they called it) on our low-grade Market Street East; it left a RAT HOLE which was paved over with a parking lot. Now the RAT has pulled the same gag in Hartford, blithely promising to fill what looks less like a RAT than a huge white elephant built in part on the promise; we suspect several years hence it will be as empty as the RAT HOLE on Market, except for that parking lot.
It strikes us as...ironic that THE HILARIOUS RED SKELTON OF OUR TIME has just sold a series to...his mortal enemies at GE BANCORP NETWORK, confirming on both sides the alleged wisdom of the Shuberts that he may be an SOB but he's OUR SOB, an easy thing to say as in this biz everybody's one.
Our age conflates honesty and AAAAAAAAAAAAATTITUDE; hence idiocies like this can happen.
THE ABSURDITY OF THE WALL STREET CASINO: Here TiVo's chugging along for months, doing mostly nothing, then all of a sudden it goes WAY UP. Then it chugs along at its new elevated price and all of a sudden it goes WAY DOWN. Here in the proverbial nutshell is why WALL STREET can start PANICS, and why a few computers and brainiacs have the power to bring down economies.
P. S. at 10:35 p. m. It went up and then down thanks to two rulings in a patent-infringement suit against DirecTV. It still looks ludicrous.
Yes, I think we can officially say we're getting tired of this topic too. First off, no one need tell us old people can cuss; and second the hacks and their publicity machinery are almost justifiably treating this old person as some sort of eccentric, a circus freak (though her AGENTS must take the bulk of the blame), and this is highly condescending to old people, as if news hacks can't condescend.
Thursday, May 13, 2010
Lane: Does Arlen Specter have any principles? [Home-page link]
We would not begin to calculate how long we could spend dreaming up punchlines for that one.
We would not begin to calculate how long we could spend dreaming up punchlines for that one.
We were drawn by this picture posted today on this blog partly because of this other comely lass with the hourglass figure, not to mention the folks around her; and it too must exert the same melancholy, for it too reminds us whatever the past's ills us we yet manage to live in the wrong age.
Playbill has run an incredibly long obit on Doris Eaton Travis, most likely one of the last of Florenz Ziegfeld's girls (or as SUPERNIKKI!!!!! would call him, "Zeigfield"), and while it may seem perhaps too long it isn't, for the reach of America's greatest showman will influence showbiz forever, though in this never-ending bad-taste age you might not know it, for he combined lavish spectacle with an extraordinary eye for female beauty, and tentpoles and PR0N are but the rotten permutations of his ethos; and though he was supposedly indifferent to music only he could have produced the masterpiece Show Boat, whose aura may seem nonexistent in this day of Branson East and its AudioAnimatronics but resounds in anyone who ever owned a cast album. Ziegfeld's girls seem to have come in two groups: those who married millionaires and those who didn't. Mrs. Travis was among the latter (though some of those who married millionaires didn't do too well either); whatever their marriages many vanished because they could do one thing and one thing only: be pretty. (Or two, like Ann Pennington.) But clearly Mrs. Travis maintained her looks well into old age, and she was smart and vigorous enough to have been a success in business and to have "graduated from the University of Oklahoma at the age of 88". Because the name Ziegfeld still exerts a spell (unlike Maxim, which emits a smell), so do his names, and his girls.
(First link via the usual AHTSJournal. We do note, by the way, that Will Rogers did call his discoverer and friend "Ziegfield", but then he wasn't a columnist who ran showbiz.)
Wednesday, May 12, 2010
ARCHDaily!
Hip army barracks!
Vertical zeppelins!
A hip prison!
This fine old French building just had a square bowel movement!
Does this remind you of lizards mating?
Hip army barracks!
Vertical zeppelins!
A hip prison!
This fine old French building just had a square bowel movement!
Does this remind you of lizards mating?
The DUHB, admirer of RON PAUL!!!!!!!!!!, throws a snit because His Omnipotence wants to make it "easier" for the Feds to hire. It strikes us that for once Om is using some sense. Why should hiring be restricted by arbitrary rules that have nothing to do with merit? Yes DUHB, it might mean MORE WORKERS IN THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT, but it could merely mean more GOOD workers.
More SOULful news from THE WORLD'S GREATEST ECONOMY!!!!!:
Before his arrest on corruption charges, Wang Yi was not only a powerful financial official in the Communist party but also one of China’s most celebrated modern classical music composers.
But since his detention and arrest last year, Mr Wang’s magnum opus – a symphony called Ode to China – has been dropped as a repertoire staple of the China National Symphony Orchestra and his compositions derided by formerly adoring media commentators and critics.
Mr Wang is described now as someone who has trouble reading music, had no formal training and was reliant on ghost writers to produce what was once hailed by state media as “China’s answer to Mozart” and “music for rejuvenation of the nation”.
Official reports suggest that most of the millions of renminbi spent on tickets to see Mr Wang’s works came from businesspeople and officials hoping to curry favour with him.
Before his arrest on corruption charges, Wang Yi was not only a powerful financial official in the Communist party but also one of China’s most celebrated modern classical music composers.
But since his detention and arrest last year, Mr Wang’s magnum opus – a symphony called Ode to China – has been dropped as a repertoire staple of the China National Symphony Orchestra and his compositions derided by formerly adoring media commentators and critics.
Mr Wang is described now as someone who has trouble reading music, had no formal training and was reliant on ghost writers to produce what was once hailed by state media as “China’s answer to Mozart” and “music for rejuvenation of the nation”.
Official reports suggest that most of the millions of renminbi spent on tickets to see Mr Wang’s works came from businesspeople and officials hoping to curry favour with him.
This should be FUN:
6.15pm: Sky News has been running snippets from the televised leaders' debate which showed Cameron and Clegg pitted against each other. It offers what I imagine is the unprecedented situation of having a public display of vehement disagreements between two senior members of the same team, simply because they were bitter opponents at the time. Cameron has already had to eat humble pie earlier (see 2.43pm) about an old comment in which he said his favourite joke was "Nick Clegg".
Clegg, meanwhile, had described the Tories' colleagues in Europe as "a bunch of nutters, antisemites, people who deny climate change exists, homophobes" during one of the debates - something that has been seized upon by Edward McMillan-Scott, a former Tory MEP, in light of the coalition deal.
McMillan-Scott, who joined the Lib Dems earlier this year after being expelled in a row over Cameron's EU strategy, is in the unenviable position of having the party he joined now linked to the party he left.
6.15pm: Sky News has been running snippets from the televised leaders' debate which showed Cameron and Clegg pitted against each other. It offers what I imagine is the unprecedented situation of having a public display of vehement disagreements between two senior members of the same team, simply because they were bitter opponents at the time. Cameron has already had to eat humble pie earlier (see 2.43pm) about an old comment in which he said his favourite joke was "Nick Clegg".
Clegg, meanwhile, had described the Tories' colleagues in Europe as "a bunch of nutters, antisemites, people who deny climate change exists, homophobes" during one of the debates - something that has been seized upon by Edward McMillan-Scott, a former Tory MEP, in light of the coalition deal.
McMillan-Scott, who joined the Lib Dems earlier this year after being expelled in a row over Cameron's EU strategy, is in the unenviable position of having the party he joined now linked to the party he left.
Whatever shriveled ghost Cannes has become we can be sure people like Melina Mercouri (here with Jules Dassin) were not airheads.
(We thought Tina ran this before; note the URL. Oh well, one good turn deserves another.)
Orrin's deserving of retirement too, as was Rep. Mollohan, because at some point these permanent Congresspoops start thinking themselves indispensable, and if there's one thing Congress has too many of it's the indispensable.
Face it: We can't stand the Beltway's guts. That's okay; the Beltway can't stand ours back.
P. S. Mollohan was part of the Stupidak -- Stupak Coalition.
Face it: We can't stand the Beltway's guts. That's okay; the Beltway can't stand ours back.
P. S. Mollohan was part of the Stupidak -- Stupak Coalition.
The news biz is increasingly edited by idiots, for idiots. We expect idiocy from Mort Zuck -- after all, he turned Useless News from a weekly to a college annual -- but he seems intent on trying to put the Daily Nooz out of biz; maybe it's the tax breaks. True this ad has been widely distributed; why didn't JANN!!!!!!!!!! try to buy out those UK midgets of soft-core? But Mort seems to take a little extra happiness in twisting the knife in his readers' backs. (It doesn't help that this soft-core's "editor" has a way with words like PAUL DRECK!!!!!!!!!! and is thus a certifiable ass.) We will confess to a certain jealousy at those who can squire such women but then we realize most of these either "sing" technocrap or are flat-out high-maintenance airheads, and then, as though remembering our favorite things, we don't feel so bad.
P. S. A special demerit to ALPHA MEDIA GROUP for the Harley-Davidson ad you can shut off only after frantically playing with an Adobe Flash pop-up menu -- and with that gal's voice you want to shut it off -- but we should expect things like this from a company that's had five CEOs in 33 months.
(Corrected at 6:53 p. m. Those UK midgets sold their American version of Maxim three years back, and folded the British edition thereafter; the CEO revolving door is responsible for the ad, and the online ad too.)
P. S. A special demerit to ALPHA MEDIA GROUP for the Harley-Davidson ad you can shut off only after frantically playing with an Adobe Flash pop-up menu -- and with that gal's voice you want to shut it off -- but we should expect things like this from a company that's had five CEOs in 33 months.
(Corrected at 6:53 p. m. Those UK midgets sold their American version of Maxim three years back, and folded the British edition thereafter; the CEO revolving door is responsible for the ad, and the online ad too.)
Monday, May 10, 2010
Ted seems to have religiously read Peter Biskind (pre-Warren Beatty); Matt seems to have religiously read David Denby. When this is the keenest our great movee minds can think up lambasting the business no wonder its films are bludgeons.
(Second link -- which linked to the first -- via NRO, where Matts are considered profound)
(Second link -- which linked to the first -- via NRO, where Matts are considered profound)
His Omnipotence unleashes a stealth Nine Finger -- so what does He get?
Elena Kagan: Confirmation Hearings 'Vapid and Hollow Charade'
NO COMMENT.
Elena Kagan: Confirmation Hearings 'Vapid and Hollow Charade'
NO COMMENT.
The E.U. has created $1T package to save the euro, but where's the money really going to come from? [Front-page squib]
Who cares as long as WE'RE IN IT!!!!!
Who cares as long as WE'RE IN IT!!!!!
"If they had done this back in January, it probably wouldn't have cost half as much. But at least they've done it and it's going down particularly well with the markets."
TRANSLATION: It's better that they're doing it now because government can spend more money propping up capitalists!!!!!
TRANSLATION: It's better that they're doing it now because government can spend more money propping up capitalists!!!!!
That the hacks have gotten out their automatic verbiage referring to Lena Horne as "legendary" means they don't understand her either. She was an enigma, as befitting a black performer who passed for white, but she was also an extraordinarily beautiful and magnetic woman with a seductive appeal, and she could have been of any race and that would have been true, and she arrived at precisely the right time, good for her and in time for us.
Sunday, May 09, 2010
This ad reminds us that it was said of BRITISH news hacks that they don't have to be bribed, an attitude they passed easily across the Atlantic, but that seems to have returned with a vengeance to the land that invented it.
Saturday, May 08, 2010
Speaking of technology, part of me resents having to buy a new computer. The simple tasks I ask of it should require a simple box; but simple tasks require arduous feats of code-writing strength, and the technology grows ever more demanding and musclebound, and keeping up with the Joneses you fall behind. Steve's Tablet From On High will become as musclebound as anything, however simple It putatively is to use, because It has to connect to so many things, and be used in so many conflicting ways, that the Acolytes will inevitably demand bigger and better Tablets, and the Lord will always oblige, as His Tithes will always increase. Why can't someone devise a computing way that strips out all the excess, all the energy-wasting complexity, and above all the inevitability of a big fat push-button mistake lying just behind every corner?
We overstate the popularity and influence of movees because the hacks who publicize them are part of the small national clique alongside stupid teenagers and hopelessly naive parents who form their core audience. The sighs of disappointment over the latest tentpole underline this. Who but the mentally -- challenged who must witness this extrusion and the hacks who must rub their hands in idiot expectation over the grosses really cares? And even the teens may be growing brain cells as witness the empty seats on midnight Thursday.
That the industry is irrelevant is beyond question, however high-decibel its publicity shrieks; the FCC's decision to allow the movee extruders to pipe their sewage direct into homes seals it. Moveegoing as a social activity was doomed from the day someone thought teevee up, but then movees started becoming teevee a long time ago, when the studios got into series production, and especially when they tried their closed-circuit experiments in the sixties; moreover because movees are now biggest-screen teevee, not least in their production and dissemination, the distinction is just as irrelevant as the industry, however much Mr. THUMBS-UP!!!!! may gabble otherwise.
That the industry is irrelevant is beyond question, however high-decibel its publicity shrieks; the FCC's decision to allow the movee extruders to pipe their sewage direct into homes seals it. Moveegoing as a social activity was doomed from the day someone thought teevee up, but then movees started becoming teevee a long time ago, when the studios got into series production, and especially when they tried their closed-circuit experiments in the sixties; moreover because movees are now biggest-screen teevee, not least in their production and dissemination, the distinction is just as irrelevant as the industry, however much Mr. THUMBS-UP!!!!! may gabble otherwise.
Thursday, May 06, 2010
It's official: High-IQ IDIOTS can cause a depression!
Sources tell CNBC the erroneous trade may have been made at Citigroup....
YOUR TAX DOLLARS....
Sources tell CNBC the erroneous trade may have been made at Citigroup....
YOUR TAX DOLLARS....
HAPPENING NOW:
Henry Paulson: "I was never able to explain to the American people.. [sic] why these rescues were for their benefit, not for Wall Street"
No Hank, you never will.
Henry Paulson: "I was never able to explain to the American people.. [sic] why these rescues were for their benefit, not for Wall Street"
No Hank, you never will.
Wednesday, May 05, 2010
The news biz began its death spiral in 1975. In that year the business showed it could usurp democracy by almost unilaterally dictating public policy. That was also the year, more fatefully, that two newsrags ran their cover ads for THE BOSS!!!!! right next door to each other. That said there really wasn't a dime's worth of difference among most news publications. The harder they claimed to compete the more alike they were. And here were Tweedledee and Tweedledum in print. Actually the rot set in the year before, when People started. That very crime against brain cells said the prime motivator for the news biz was advertising -- selling ad pages and selling ads among the ad pages. Combined with its newfound dictatorial powers no wonder the press began to die; it had grown not merely apart from its audience, but superior to it, and with the wherewithal to avoid the scornful's questions. Outfits like Zeitgeist might stand a chance with real talent and fully exercising the notion JonBoy imperfectly expressed of wanting to dazzle the readers with a weekly AHA! moment, but decades of conformity primed by power and advertising ended that hope before it could be born. Indeed we are struck that Poynter's goody-goodies conceded game, set and match by calling The New ECONOWIZ "an uncomfortable mix of the abstruse and glib, mostly an expendable read both in print and online." That is what the whole news biz has become, and barring a sudden surge of Menckens it is doomed to spiral ever downward, whatever its profits or its editors' egos.
Which comes first: the sale of Zeitgeist -- or the folding?
Econowiz II didn't work.
(Via HENRY HONEST!!!!!)
Econowiz II didn't work.
(Via HENRY HONEST!!!!!)
Obama biggest recipient of BP cash
This means nothing; there's no warm body the likes of corporations can't heat up to.
This means nothing; there's no warm body the likes of corporations can't heat up to.
But for our continued bad mood over the Human Rights Stalwarts of Mountain View playing mind games with our hits we'd have posted yesterday about Ernie Harwell. We listened to some of his broadcasts, and the man had a dignity and authority about him behind the mike -- plus by all accounts he was a truly grand guy. We have forlornly counted all the top-notch baseball announcers no longer with us, and now it is down to Vin, and such is the loss that even he can't stop us from giving a big who cares to that sport of zillionaires and mercenaries called SELIGISM, which like an alien life form took over baseball's ghost of a shadow of itself. But once it was baseball, and once it was folks like Ernie Harwell. How much we have lost.
Monday, May 03, 2010
Florida's Crist got push from Schwarzenegger before leaving GOP
Awwww, why couldn't they have left together?
Awwww, why couldn't they have left together?
Book: Obama Dressed Down Pentagon Brass
Why am I thinking they haven't grown too touchy-feely since?
(Sorry for the NewsMAX!!!!!)
Why am I thinking they haven't grown too touchy-feely since?
(Sorry for the NewsMAX!!!!!)
ARCHDaily!
Ladies and gentlemen, Space Rocket X2050, which took off three weeks ago from its specially-built launch pad in Michigan...
...has just landed in Austria....
Ladies and gentlemen, Space Rocket X2050, which took off three weeks ago from its specially-built launch pad in Michigan...
...has just landed in Austria....
This came as a link through AHTSJournal, and it sounds anecdotal to us, but why shouldn't people give up their cable? All they're getting is junk TV they could get for free. The BRIAN ROBBERS and UB IGERS will make it more difficult to cut the cord by trying to hog everything, but not IMPOSSIBLE.
Indeed it would seem these preeners will NEVER stop talking about that damned dinner. I guess last year was an anomaly for bigmedia, alas.